This reminds me of the saying "often the most simplest organism is the most effective". Or whatever it was... Also reminds me of the end of that movie
Evolution with David Duchovny. Remember the giant single cell amoeba type thing..? Is that where this is headed? Heheh

Don't think it's a cool thing at all. As there are too much unknown about the newly created organisms, what will they do to the earth is also unknown.
It's RNA samples, daily activities should be studied.

I'd guess the extra genes are there for adapability in successive generations. They could probably strip it down even more. Then you'll have something
that's pretty basic and likely vulnerable to other things in the environment. (Much like the previous tamed animal analogy.)

originally posted by: Hr2burn
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe when ever there is a advancement in science it is always used by the governments of the world for peace and
betterment of mankind....I'm excited!

Isn't that after the military uses it for war and the big companies milk it for as much money as they can. When those angles have been exhausted, it's
open for general betterment.

There is a lot of misinformation in this thread. This is the minimal genome project. Essentially, they're methodically deleting genes from Mycoplasma
mycoides to identify what the base essential genes for life are. This is V3, deleting 428 of the previously 901 genes. This isn't creating life, this
is altering existing life and is extremely important to the biological field.

originally posted by: jsm318
There is a lot of misinformation in this thread. This is the minimal genome project. Essentially, they're methodically deleting genes from Mycoplasma
mycoides to identify what the base essential genes for life are. This is V3, deleting 428 of the previously 901 genes. This isn't creating life, this
is altering existing life and is extremely important to the biological field.

Wrong, this is creating Synthetic Life hence the name Syn 3.0 they previously created Syn 1.0. It's a Synthetic life form.

In Newly Created Life-Form, a Major Mystery

Scientists have created a synthetic organism that possesses only the genes it needs to survive. But they have no idea what roughly a third of those
genes do.

That’s what Craig Venter and his collaborators have attempted to do in a new study published today in the journal Science. Venter’s team
painstakingly whittled down the genome of Mycoplasma mycoides, a bacterium that lives in cattle, to reveal a bare-bones set of genetic instructions
capable of making life. The result is a tiny organism named syn3.0 that contains just 473 genes. (By comparison, E. coli has about 4,000 to 5,000
genes, and humans have roughly 20,000.)

This is from the genome of a synthetic version of Mycoplasma mycoides that was created in 2010. They then deleted genes from that synthetic organism.
This is life they created.

In 2008, Venter and his collaborator Hamilton Smith created the first synthetic bacterial genome by building a modified version of M.
genitalium’s DNA. Then in 2010 they made the first self-replicating synthetic organism, manufacturing a version of M. mycoides’ genome and then
transplanting it into a different Mycoplasma species. The synthetic genome took over the cell, replacing the native operating system with a human-made
version. The synthetic M. mycoides genome was mostly identical to the natural version, save for a few genetic watermarks — researchers added their
names and a few famous quotes, including a slightly garbled version of Richard Feynman’s assertion, “What I cannot create, I do not
understand.”

originally posted by: jsm318
There is a lot of misinformation in this thread. This is the minimal genome project. Essentially, they're methodically deleting genes from Mycoplasma
mycoides to identify what the base essential genes for life are. This is V3, deleting 428 of the previously 901 genes. This isn't creating life, this
is altering existing life and is extremely important to the biological field.

Wrong, this is creating Synthetic Life hence the name Syn 3.0 they previously created Syn 1.0. It's a Synthetic life form.

In Newly Created Life-Form, a Major Mystery

Scientists have created a synthetic organism that possesses only the genes it needs to survive. But they have no idea what roughly a third of those
genes do.

That’s what Craig Venter and his collaborators have attempted to do in a new study published today in the journal Science. Venter’s team
painstakingly whittled down the genome of Mycoplasma mycoides, a bacterium that lives in cattle, to reveal a bare-bones set of genetic instructions
capable of making life. The result is a tiny organism named syn3.0 that contains just 473 genes. (By comparison, E. coli has about 4,000 to 5,000
genes, and humans have roughly 20,000.)

This is from the genome of a synthetic version of Mycoplasma mycoides that was created in 2010. They then deleted genes from that synthetic organism.
This is life they created.

In 2008, Venter and his collaborator Hamilton Smith created the first synthetic bacterial genome by building a modified version of M.
genitalium’s DNA. Then in 2010 they made the first self-replicating synthetic organism, manufacturing a version of M. mycoides’ genome and then
transplanting it into a different Mycoplasma species. The synthetic genome took over the cell, replacing the native operating system with a human-made
version. The synthetic M. mycoides genome was mostly identical to the natural version, save for a few genetic watermarks — researchers added their
names and a few famous quotes, including a slightly garbled version of Richard Feynman’s assertion, “What I cannot create, I do not
understand.”

Again, this is why it's called Syn(thetic) 3.0.

No, you're mistaken. It's synthetic because the genome was synthesized and re-assembled in pieces. Essentially, the reassembled genome is identical.
This method is used because of how gene deletions are currently performed. To delete a gene, a selectable marker is required. However, to delete 428
genes would require hundreds of selectable markers (usually antibiotics) and there just aren't that many (not to mention how long this would take).
Instead, the group can reassemble the genome from 100 hundreds of fragments and omit certain fragments that contain the gene the want to delete.
Essentially, deleting hundreds of genes in one step.

Example: If I have 3 fragments where fragment 1 has homology to fragment 2 which has homology to fragment 3, I can delete fragment 2 by putting the
homology for fragment 1 on fragment 3, allowing these two fragments to now anneal and omit fragment 2.

Please read the paper, it's a great read.

P.S. Synthetic might not mean what you think it means in biology. Synthetic in this context just means a machine assembled the nucleotides away from a
host. Whether a machine performs it, or a host cell, the sequence is identical. A PCR reaction is "synthetic" even though you're using biological
reagents.

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